Your AI agent is only as good as the harness around it

The New Stack · 1 month ago · 39 ● 2 sources

Agent demos can look reliable until real inputs trigger missing records, tool errors, policy changes, or capability limits that reveal the system is not production-ready. The article’s example billing trace includes a 13.4s run that used 2,180 tokens and cost $0.04, illustrating how a harness logs and gates work around the model. Production deployments change by treating the model as only one component and adding tool contracts, permissions, deliberate context, traces, and failure-focused tests so wrong calls are contained and diagnosable.